Friday, April 22, 2005

A couple of years ago, I volunteered to help a friend maximize the number of perennials she had by making a nursery bed on a far edge of rural property. We filled it with hundreds of irises that had not been divided in years, daylilies, little rose-of-sharon saplings, and a few other perennials that I am hazy in recalling (bee balm/monardia?).

She has moved on, but today I walked down to the corner of a field where we made the nursery bed. Through tall grass, I looked for the spot where I thought it was. There was nothing amid the new nettles and old dead brush. Perhaps deer or so other wildlife had gotten them all.

And then I saw them. Four long rows of healthy bearded irises. Two rows of daylilies. And a short row of rose-of-sharon saplings. All the plants were bigger and stronger looking than they had appeared that late summer day when we planted them.

The Platonic form of irises and daylilies, out of the world's sight, amid the grass and weeds.